Fidelity
by NakuruAngel
Summary: Emotion is messy, he said. I am messy. I hate him. But oh, how I love him. Mello x Near. In the end, it all came down to their twisted fidelity. YAOI.


**AN:: Another break from 'Carry Me Home', my Naruto GaaLee ficcy. I love these two, they just rock. :3**

. : F I D E L I T Y : .

For the longest time, all I remembered was hate. All I knew was rage, rivalry, betrayal, envy, swirling and biting and lashing out at everything around me like a messy whirlwind of emotion.

He said emotion was messy.

And he didn't like mess. Anyone could tell by looking at him, his soft, wavy hair, stainless, unwrinkled clothes and flawless, pale, unmarred skin.

Anyone could tell.

But the fact that everyone saw it did nothing to make me hate it less. I knew I was messy—I knew my emotions were a cluttered mess. Just like what he said he hated.

Me. I knew. Or I thought I knew. You could never tell with him, what he thought or hated or loved.

No one could ever tell.

We were taught never to assume without a reasonable amount of evidence. But everyone could tell L liked him far more than me, so I did it anyway. I assumed that, since I hated him, he hated me back.

For a long time, though, I didn't notice. I didn't pay attention.

I didn't see that look, that sad, needy gaze that he sent me every time I went off on him, screaming, yelling, and throwing things. Nor did I really take note of the fact that the only person doing those things was me. He never screamed, never _changed._

He didn't want more mess. I more than made up for his lack of emotion.

When I screamed, he stared. He never cried, never yelled back. He did not show a single damn _thing_ until the yelling was over. At the beginning, he didn't do anything the entire time. Ever.

He stared at me, almost longingly, almost pitying me but not quite because oh, pity would be an emotion and of course he couldn't have that. His gray eyes were hardly human, flat but not empty, still but not dead and every time I saw them it made me _furious._

At first, I'd wanted to vent—and I'd wanted to make him hurt. I'd wanted to make him cry and scream bloody murder at me and break down, finally, if only for ten minutes.

I suppose, in the end, all I wanted was to be human and be accepted by another human.

Not another robot. Not him, the way he normally was.

I sometimes caught myself wishing I could touch his hair or hold him close. Usually, those were the times I really went off on him. Because really, I couldn't feel this way about a robot like him. I wanted proof, more than anything, that he could feel the same as me.

For the longest time, none came. For the longest time, I never got a response and I walked away from our fights—_my _fights, because he never, ever fought—with a heavy heart and a sinking feeling that I was becoming more and more the image that he hated.

But then, I started to notice.

I started to notice that the only one who wanted to fight was me. I started to notice that look he gave me—the one that said anything goes as long as I'm happy with it.

That frustrated me. Because I didn't know what to do with that look. I had no idea.

One time, I got so fed up with trying to scream and yell my feelings and my thoughts at someone who, for all I knew, wasn't even paying attention (but oh, I knew he was, by the awful, dissatisfied air I left the room with every time) that I hit him.

I _hit him._

And I didn't hit him softly. Not tenderly, like I so wanted to touch him. Not gently. Not _lovingly._

I hit him, and he was thrown backwards, landing on his back, limbs sprawled out. He sat up, wiping some blood from his mouth.

For some reason I could not discern, that blood egged me on. Made me want more because he was finally doing something human.

Bleeding was the most human thing anybody could do. Next to crying, I suppose.

Or even laughing.

None of which he'd ever done until that point.

So I hit him again. I kicked him. I think I raked my nails across his shoulder at one point when I picked him up and threw him. Never did he put up a fight. Never did that almost-but-not-quite-pitying look leave his face. It became only sadder, full of more need and becoming more and more empty.

That time, when I was done, I was panting heavily. He lay there, bruised and beaten (though of course he would do what he could to cover it up for class the next day) but not crying. Not quite.

And I felt terrible. _Awful._ Because then I couldn't remember what I had wanted to achieve by yelling in the first place and I didn't have time to remember because I was crying, sobbing, and I had somehow fallen to the floor and made my way to him, pulling his tired body to me and weeping over his silk hair and porcelain skin.

Several moments of this and we had somehow switched positions. He was stroking my hair now, an arm securely around my neck as I whimpered and cried pathetically, letting tears stream in thin, hot lines down my face. He ran his fingers down my face and over my cheeks and on my shoulder, all the while letting me cry to my heart's content.

And I begged him, voice wet and croaking from the tears, for forgiveness.

I wanted _him_ to forgive _me._

And he held me and stroked my hair and hushed me, whispering breathily in my ear all the while, soothing me with his calm, clean touch and warm—but not hot—breath on my skin. He calmed me and made me quiet until eventually I fell asleep to his gentle lullaby, and when I awoke, we got along again.

For a while.

Until I lost my temper again. I hit him, once again, and he let me. I kicked him, and he let me.

I _abused_ him, and he _let_ me.

And so it went on.

I can't say how long it happened for. This sick, twisted, contradictory pattern which I found myself repeating and him following. Endlessly, it seemed.

And one time, when it got particularly bad and he had a jagged cut from my boot across his shoulder, bleeding down his arm, I asked wit a sneer why he let me, time and time again.

He answered me, "Because it makes you happy."

I was at a genuine loss for words. My face fell, losing its sneer, my fiery anger cooling and my passion disintegrating into the thin air of my words that weren't. It made me happy. Of course it did.

But of course it didn't.

I stared vacantly at him for a moment, not quite comprehending this. He was making me happy. He was making me miserable while _thinking _he was making me happy.

And oh, that was the worst part only because he made it clear that he _wanted_ me happy.

I collapsed to my knees. Crawling, and in a blur of emotion, of mess, I was kissing him, I was apologizing, I was crying and he was, too, for reasons I couldn't comprehend because it certainly wasn't from the cut on his shoulder. I held him and begged, just like always and yet not quite like the usual, for forgiveness, and made it as clear as I could that I didn't expect love, too.

But he kissed me, and I knew that he would give it anyway.

And in this way came an end to my sick, wicked fidelity and from it was born an attraction, an attachment I never expected.

But the wonderful thing was that he hadn't expected it, either.

. : E N D : .


End file.
